


setting a precedent

by andreaphobia



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Denial, M/M, nighttime cuddles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-06
Updated: 2016-07-06
Packaged: 2018-07-21 20:01:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7401874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andreaphobia/pseuds/andreaphobia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lance sneaks into Keith's room one night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	setting a precedent

**Author's Note:**

> hi im back and now im voltron trash

Keith has always been a light sleeper, so when the door to his cabin slides open in the middle of the night, he comes awake at once.

“Relax, man,” says a voice that Keith had really kind of hoped he wouldn’t be hearing again until morning. “It’s just me.”

Keith lets out a groan, slumping back into his bunk. “What do you  _want_ , Lance? It’s—” He opens his eyes again to check the time, inspects the green glowing numbers projected onto the ceiling over the bed, which… okay, are in Altean and don’t make any sense. He settles for, “It’s really, _really_ late,” and pushes his face back into his pillow, because in certain situations, asphyxiation might just be the only escape from a guy like Lance.

“Or really, really early! Depending on your point of view. Now budge up.” The voice is closer now; it seems to be coming somewhere from the vicinity of Keith’s bedside.

“What? No,” Keith says automatically. “Go bother someone else.”

“C’mooon,” whines Lance, in a way that’s perfectly crafted to grate on the senses. Keith rolls back over, and squints. He can see more clearly now that his eyes are adjusting to the darkness, which allows him to confirm that the owner of the voice that is bothering him at the moment is, indeed, Lance, not that there was any doubt about that. (At least, Keith thinks, he’s not wearing those damn fluffy lion slippers.)

“I said no. The hell are you doing in my room, anyway?”

“Saying hi? Look, stop being such a baby and make room. Or what, too afraid to share a bed with someone? You think I, I’ll think you’re  _gay_ or something?”

“ _What?_ I’m not afraid of—I can’t believe this is happening,” Keith mutters, pressing fingers to his temples to ward off the headache that is steadily building.

“While you’re busy questioning your grip on reality, maybe you could also move over.”

The bed does not squeak when Lance sits on the edge of it, probably because there are no springs in Altean mattresses; instead it makes a sound kind of like a souffle deflating. Instinctively Keith draws back, which makes just enough room for Lance to lie down next to him, but not quite enough room for this to happen without some overlap.

The overlap, as it turns out, is half of Lance’s torso draped over his, chest to chest, and Lance’s stubble scraping the side of his neck. Hot breath, carrying the faint, flowery scent of what passes, on Altea, for toothpaste.

Keith freezes. The only sound: the low, pulse-like hum of the crystal, deep in the heart of the castle, reverberating through the walls like an engine. Abruptly Keith is hyper-aware of every nerve in his body tingling, the same way he feels when Gladiola turns to face him on the training deck and he looks right into its single glowing eye—a rush of fear and adrenaline and excitement.

 _Calm down,_ he snaps, inside his own head. _Focus. Don’t let him get to you._ This refrain, ever so helpful on the training deck, doesn’t seem to be helping him now. When he breathes in, he’s shocked at how ragged it sounds.

He grips Lance’s shoulder and hisses, shakily, “Ever heard of the concept of personal space?” Pushing Lance away or pulling him closer, he’s not sure—at any rate he’s squeezing tight. He can feel the musculature of Lance’s back, taut under his fingertips. This is not a detail about Lance that he had ever wished to know this intimately, but alas.

Lance just laughs, a low husky sound that tickles Keith’s Adam’s apple. (Keith has never thought of himself as a screamer, but right now, he is suppressing the urge to do just that.)

“You’re one to talk, Mister _I cradled you in my arms_ —”

“I thought you’d forgotten all about that?” Keith says, trying desperately not to sound breathless because _damn it_ , Lance sounds so cool and unflustered, and he’d rather die than let a complete goober like Lance out-cool him.

“I remember it whenever I feel like hating myself. We’re bonding right now, okay? We are having,” says Lance, firmly, “a bonding moment.”

Silence follows this, though ‘silence’ as a descriptor doesn’t capture the rush of blood in his ears, the way it pounds incessantly through his head. Keith tries to focus on anything but Lance’s body and Lance’s smell and the way he feels, the way they feel together—which is hard when no one is saying anything and it’s literally everywhere, all around him, pinning him to the bed.

So he’s grateful when at last Lance breaks the silence to mutter, disgruntled, “You don’t feel _anything_ like my mom.”

 _I sure hope not_ , Keith thinks. But to his horror, he feels his lips jerk into something that feels suspiciously like a smile. Marveling, perhaps, at the sheer absurdity of Lance invading his room in the middle of the night to climb into his bed and then compare him to Lance’s mother.

Out loud he says, “Had too much space juice?”

“My mama didn’t raise no drunk,” Lance mumbles, indignant. “I look like an alcoholic to you?”

“You,” says Keith, hoping that Lance can hear him roll his eyes, “are such a mama’s boy.”

But then it strikes him: this doesn’t feel bad. It’s always cold in the cabins, possibly because the Altean conception of central air borders on arctic. There’s heat between their bodies, wherever they touch. And getting up, or rolling over, or pushing Lance away: all of these things would take effort, effort which, truth be told, he doesn’t _really_ feel like expending.

With a slight twitch—probably the contextual equivalent of yawning and stretching so you can drape your arm over a girl’s shoulders—he settles his hand into the small of Lance’s back, fingertips splayed into a five-point star.

If Lance notices this he doesn’t show any sign of it. Which is good, because Keith is aware that on some level the only thing sustaining this state of affairs is denial. He breathes in and out; feels Lance’s chest move against his.

A faint, unidentifiable thrill runs through him.

For a while, Lance doesn’t seem to have anything to say, which might be a world first. Keith is just thinking, loopily, about how to commemorate this occasion when Lance speaks again.

“Hey.”

“What?”

“You miss Earth?”

“Sometimes,” Keith breathes. Maybe a parade? Lance is always going on about those, although this probably isn’t what he meant by having a parade in his honor. He feels the rapid approach of sleep, and is too exhausted to ward it off.

The last thing he hears before fading is a faint, “Yeah. Me too.”

*

In the morning they are awoken by a high-pitched, girlish shriek, courtesy of Coran. Lance bruises his tailbone falling out of bed, and the resulting argument quickly devolves into a lecture on Altean safe sex, which Keith thinks he could have happily gone his whole life without knowing, thank you very much.

But because it actually _is_ fun to one-up Lance, the next night, Keith beats him at his own game and shows up at Lance’s cabin unannounced.

Seated on his bunk, Lance stares at him across the room for a moment, mouth hanging stupidly open.

“Wait, waitwaitwaitwait _wait_ just a second! Is this a thing now?” he asks, swallowing. “I mean, is this—are we—”

Keith only shrugs. As usual, Lance talks way too much. So, he reasons, it’s not surprising that he’d like being near Lance when he’s asleep. Way less noise and grandstanding about who the most awesome pilot is.

“It’s your turn,” he says, simply, approaching the bunk to sit down. When Lance grins, he relaxes a little. This is familiar territory, after all, and it’s easier to navigate that than to think about whether things have changed.

“I didn’t realize we were taking turns,” Lance says. “So can I be the arm lion next time? You can be the leg lion.” He pauses to think. “Or maybe the ass lion, for obvious reasons.”

“You should be the mouth lion,” Keith tells him. “You can talk the Galra to death.”

“Ha ha, _very_ funny. You’re a total freakin’ riot.”

“Thanks,” says Keith, hiding his smile against Lance’s shoulder. “I know.”

**Author's Note:**

> andreaphobia @ tumblr & twitter, lets be voltron pals


End file.
